President Barack Obama and his Democratic Party would have liked to increase taxes as part of a “balanced” approach to deficit reduction. Republicans, adamantly opposed to raising taxes, especially during a time of fragile economic recovery, managed to prevent immediate tax hikes although revenue enhancement could be part of a broader plan that is supposed to be worked out by a bipartisan congressional committee later | Read More »
Senate Democrats have threatened to block Speaker John Boehner’s $917 billion deficit reduction plan that would raise the nation’s debt ceiling by a similar amount this year. Just what budget cuts are they willing to accept? Republican House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan‘s budget achieved more than $6 trillion in deficit reduction over the next ten years. All House Republicans voted for his budget in | Read More »
In the wake of the 2008 financial meltdown, Congress enacted an almost $800 billion stimulus bill in the assumption that an artificial increase in consumer demand could propel the nation into recovery. The rationale was pure Keynesian economics—in times of crisis, the government should borrow, spend and boost demand to generate growth. Two years later, it’s clear that the stimulus didn’t work. Unemployment is still | Read More »
A recent Gallup poll found that more American seniors support Paul Ryan’s reform plan for Medicare than they do the president’s. 48 percent of those over the age of 65 favor the Wisconsin congressman’s approach that would privatize the program and entitle people to “premium support” or vouchers with which to buy health insurance on the private market. 42 percent support Barack Obama who has | Read More »
The United States, like most nations in the developed world, maintain a progressive federal income tax system, meaning people not only pay a given percentage of their income in taxes but that percentage increases for high income earners, from 10 percent for individuals making a little more than $8,000 a year to 35 percent on incomes over $370,000. As a result, in 2008, the top | Read More »
While a temporary spending measure has averted a government shutdown in the United States, the two major political parties are still tens of billions apart in how much they’re willing to cut. Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to cut $61 billion from this fiscal year’s budget but the Democratic majority in the Senate rejected the measure. Senior Democratic Dick Durbin of Illinois told | Read More »
What is the purpose of government? The public debate in America has once again turned to this all important question and for the first time in a long time, the country elected legislators last fall who adhere to a radically different view about the role of government than is the consensus. Most politicians—and voters—left and right agree that government should not only provide basic security | Read More »
As Republicans will vote to repeal ObamaCare in the House of Representatives this week, Democrats are condemning the measure as fiscally irresponsible. Repealing their health care reform bill, liberals say, would add some $230 billion to the federal deficit over the next decade. The numbers come from the Congressional Budget Office and while some Republicans dispute them, I don’t really care. For a decent and | Read More »
Writing for Fox Business, David Asman describes what’s hampering the recovery of the United States today: the perception of American weakness. European and Asian countries dismiss us as weak and humiliate the president when he goes overseas looking for trade deals and backup for his own failed economic policies. Our dollar looks weak, even though it could be strong if the Fed would stop weakening | Read More »
Members of the president’s debt commission have proposed deep budget cuts in order to rein in government spending in the United States. Entitlement programs as Medicare and Social Security, which are responsible for the brunt of federal spending, would be hit especially hard. The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, created by President Barack Obama in January of this year, was not supposed to | Read More »
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